Writing Dialogue and Developing Characters with Author Mandy McHugh

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EPISODE INFO:
If you’re into morally gray characters, then you’re going to love today’s guest. 

And you’re going to love her even more if you want to write great dialogue.

Seriously, if you need to improve your dialogue writing, read Mandy McHugh’s work.

BIO:
Mandy McHugh is an author from upstate NY. She received her MA in English Lit from the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY and her BA in English from Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY.  

Her debut novel, CHLOE CATES IS MISSING, was one of Popsugar's best mysteries and thrillers of 2022. 

IT TAKES MONSTERS is out now!

Tweet me @DavidRGwyn

Transcript

T000 - Mandy McHugh

Mandy McHugh: [00:00:00] So really just, you know your characters better than anybody else.

So really listen to the voices and what they're trying to come in and don't try to make them be anything that they're not. 

David Gwyn: If you're into morally gray characters, then you're going to love today's guest. And you're going to love her even more. If you want to write great dialogue. Seriously, if you need you to improve your dialogue and your writing. Read Mandy McHughs work. I'm David Gwyn and agented writer navigating the world of traditional publishing. During this first season of the thriller one-on-one podcast, we're going to be focusing on building the skills necessary to write the kinds of thrillers that land you and agent and readers. 

 I'm talking to authors and agents and other industry professionals about the best way to write a novel. If you want the expert secrets, this is where you're going to find them. Last week on the podcast, we talked to literary agent Amy Neilson.

Amy Nielsen: enough detail so that I'm hypothesizing what I think is going to happen, but I don't have to be right and I sometimes love when a reader drops [00:01:00] hints and I hypothesize something And I'm wrong.

You know, and that's totally okay. You know, your goal isn't to trick your reader, but it's okay to not be right sometimes. 

David Gwyn: I've linked that episode in the description. 

If you want to check that out, today's guest is Mandy McHugh. She's an author from upstate New York. She received her ma in English lit from the college of Saint rose in Albany, New York. And she has her BA in English, from Le Moyne college in Syracuse, her newest novel, it takes monsters is out now. 

And I highly suggest you read it.

But before you do, let's get into this interview. 

Mandy, thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate you taking the time to, to chat with us. 

Mandy McHugh: Oh, thanks for having me. I'm so glad you're here. 

David Gwyn: So, I'm really excited to chat. Your newest novel, It Takes Monsters, which is out now, and it is a really fun read.

Like, I really, really enjoyed it. Thank you. Can you tell us a little bit about what it's about? 

Mandy McHugh: In a nutshell and it's about a woman named Victoria who has lost her company that she was planning on getting from her father to her [00:02:00] husband, who in turn basically runs it into the ground. And exhausting all of her options and trying to take control of her life, she decides to murder her husband.

But unfortunately, somebody beats her to it, and what happens in the Coming days after the murder is a game of cat and mouse where she's being framed for the murder and has to prove her innocence even though she's not really that innocent because she had the murder planned all along. Yeah, 

David Gwyn: it's such a unique premise.

I think it's so interesting, like, I feel like I've read books where the main character killed someone and then there's books where the main character did nothing wrong, and this really, like, kind of threads the needle on those two things because she had, like, the plan but never went through with it, and so I'm dying to know, it's, like, such a unique premise.

Where did this idea come from? 

Mandy McHugh: So I, originally I came from King Lear. I was like reading random books in the middle of the night. I was, this is I wrote this I think in, I started it in 2018. [00:03:00] And I had, you know, a young baby at home and I was up basically all night long. And so I started rereading just anything I had on my bookshelf to, Stop the boredom, I was, in the middle of the night.

And I love the dynamic between the three sisters and the father. And I really wanted to explore, like, the complicated family drama of it, but at the same time, I wanted to move away from, like, the mother daughter, parent child dynamic that I had explored in Chloe Cates, and focus more on a married couple.

And then I had also read a ton of thrillers where somebody kills somebody, but very few where, like, you have this plan, you're going to do this plan, and it gets thwarted. So I'm like, she's going to do it. She's not innocent. She wants to do the murder. She's going to do it. It's not a matter of backing down from fear or guilt.

Like, she's going to do it, but just to have that chance taken from her when [00:04:00] everything else is being taken from her. And I just ran with it. 

David Gwyn: Yeah, it's, it's funny, I, I keep thinking about, as I was reading it, I was like, weirdly rooting for her, and I was like, wait, like, am I supposed to be? Like, what? How, why do I feel, like, so akin, like, with, with her?

Like, why do I feel like I'm rooting for her, when obviously she's gonna do this, this thing, which is terrible, and I'm like, I was like, how did you pull that off? Like, what did you do? Like, 

Mandy McHugh: what witchcraft was that? That is such a good question. I I love a morally great character so I gravitate toward, it's funny because so many people who have read Chloe Cates or even It Takes Monsters Now, one of the first comments I get is, your characters aren't very likable, and I'm like, I'm not trying to write Characters that are likable.

But I want my characters to be interesting and nuanced where they're not just like so cut and dry because nothing is ever so black and white. And I wanted it to be [00:05:00] somebody doing a bad thing but is kind of relatable and that you can kind of root for at times but you're not necessarily sure if you should be.

Which is uh, like Dexter. I love, I think he's, Dexter is such a great character. Like you don't want him Like, you shouldn't want him to succeed in his murders, but at the same time, like, it is so cathartic when he kills the bad guy. Because we have these moral codes. It's ingrained in us and we have a, you know, a sense of right and wrong and to play off of that through a character like Victoria, where you should not want her to be able to murder her husband, but at the same time, like she's endearing in her, like you can kind of see where she's justified in her rationale or somebody like Ray Donovan.

I don't know if you've ever watched, he's a Hollywood fixer, you shouldn't want him to, you know, succeed in kneecapping the guy who's blackmailing his client, but he's, he's got a moral code of his own, and he works for that, and Victoria, while it's not you know, the [00:06:00] strongest sense of moral, she is devoted to her purpose, and she knows what's right and wrong, and she knows that she has been wronged.

So how does she work through that? And I think that's kind of where it's, yeah. I think 

David Gwyn: that's so funny. I think listening to you explain it to me, I was like, yeah, you're right. Like there's this type of character, this not frequently by any means, but certainly exists in this. genre and it's funny, obviously this, this thriller or this podcast is reaches out to a lot of thriller writers and writers who want to be where you are.

And if you're writing a character that you know is going to do something bad or wants to do something bad. This is a great book for you to read so if you're listening to this and you're like Morally great characters are my thing like you got to check this book out Perfect for you

so what are you working on now? 

Mandy McHugh: My book three is finished. It's out on submission right now looking for you [00:07:00] know, we're Trying to find a home for it. It's tentatively called Half Heart. And it is about two friends who are, like, early 30s, you know, like, somewhere in between being, like, your 20s going to a bar and, like, your full grown suburban mom.

And they have this thing where once a week they get together after work and classes at a bar. And one of them cancels and the other one decides to still go to the bar by herself. And she meets somebody and never comes home. And the friend is convinced that something has happened to her because she is, the friend when she disappeared is in the process of investigating her mother's cold case murder.

whIle the police believe you know, she is a perfectly grown woman. If she was in trouble she would let somebody know. There's no evidence of foul play. So, the friend to team up with the detective who was working in the cold case of the mother's murder and try and find her missing friend.

David Gwyn: [00:08:00] Another great premise. I mean, I'm not surprised at all. 

Mandy McHugh: And there are tons of morally great characters in this too. 

David Gwyn: I feel like we're finding a theme here. 

Mandy McHugh: And that's funny. So that one is out on sub and I'm actually working on, I think it is my eighth or ninth manuscript right now. And it is basically a, a mom murder club.

It's like a group of women who have this like meeting and they've been friends for years and once a month they get together and analyze Podcasts and true crime documentaries, and then they decide to do a murder themselves You come up with great stuff, that's awesome I have a lot of nightmares This is in no way, shape, or form based on real life.

David Gwyn: Yeah. Is that like the caveat you have to say that? I think it was 

Mandy McHugh: like the very first interview question I had about It Takes Monsters is, is your husband okay? And I'm like, no. Next question. That's great. [00:09:00]

David Gwyn: So cool. Third book kind of on sub now. It sounds like eight, nine manuscripts under your belt. What is your writing process like?

Are you a plotter, a pantser, somewhere in between? Where, where are you? 

Mandy McHugh: So, I think my writing process has evolved quite a bit since the beginning. Like, there are some things that will not change. I always have a notebook with me, or my notes app, too. I Write down sentences that, like, come to me, or observations, or details, questions.

So, I will always have that as, like, one of my core writing. Strategies. I have been a pantser for as long as I can remember. I never have any idea where my stories are gonna go. And It Takes Monsters went through quite extensive rewrites. There were a lot of edits done so there are probably five or six different versions of this story with different endings, different character arcs and subplots.

It was a completely different book when I first [00:10:00] finished it. Which is exciting. I love not knowing where my characters are gonna go and what's going to happen. But because this book went through so many rewrites, I really had to force myself to be more organized in my plotting so that I wouldn't slip into a hole or Start writing one thing that I had already deleted.

So I've kind of got this hybrid where like, I don't really know what's going to happen. I never outline a book fully, but once I have an idea of where I want a chapter to go, I will kind of like flesh out the next chapter. And just have a rough idea of where I want to end up and then go from there.

That's really 

David Gwyn: interesting. I haven't heard that where it's almost like you're plotting just one step ahead. Yeah, it's, it's 

Mandy McHugh: basically that. Yeah. 

David Gwyn: That's cool. So I want to backtrack a little bit and talk about how you got started writing. Did you always know you wanted to be a 

Mandy McHugh: writer? I think I did I just didn't realize that it was actually like a viable option for me as a kid It's not like [00:11:00] when you're in school They sit you down and say like you can write novels like you can get published.

It's it always seems so abstract to me But I was like when I was a kid. I had those multicolored pens And a composition, marble composition notebooks. And I was writing stories like Goosebumps or Fear Street. And every chapter was a different color. And I was writing short stories through middle school.

And then I showed one of my best friends this short story I was working on. That was probably inspired by a Lifetime movie that I shouldn't have been watching. Where like a girl is Like a pyromaniac and my friend was like, you are so weird and it hurt me so much that I like did not show anybody anything that I was writing and I stopped doing anything that was not academic for a really long time.

But luckily when I went to college, I took poetry and creative writing courses and I started writing again slowly in my spare [00:12:00] time. And then I went into teaching which was great, but I didn't have a lot of time for that either, and I was like, I'm never going to be able to write anything longer than a short story.

I don't have the time or the dedication to it. But then I Was at home with my first child, my daughter, and I started writing articles like local interest pieces for mothers in the area and I Published my first short story and then had another one that was on a horror podcast because that was like really my bread and butter You know, I was Stephen King all the way So I published my first short story had one performed on the no sleep podcast and I was like, I'm just gonna push through and see if I can write a book.

And it was slow going and I had no idea. I had no connections in the industry. I didn't know anything about publishing. I think I queried before I had even written my first paragraph. I was like, Oh, I'm just going to do this. I'll submit to [00:13:00] like, duh, online. They won't even care. But I finished my first manuscript, which was called, like, Monsters of the Deep and it was another it was like a friend's sci fi horror that ended up getting picked up through Pitch, Pitchworse on Twitter because Twitter has been invaluable to me as a writer, which is crazy for, like, in terms of networking, 

but it was so sh it was like 70, 000 words, and the imprint that picked it up folded within a year, but it taught me so much about my own kind of approach to writing, and I learned so much about querying, and ended up getting my agent from that. aNd I've changed agents a few times because the, you know, publishing is crazy, but yeah, it's, you know, I knew I wanted to write.

I just didn't know that I could until I was just like, whatever, let's do it. 

David Gwyn: You 

Mandy McHugh: got to jump in with both feet. Yeah. Like it will tell me if I, if I don't try. Yeah. Yeah. 

David Gwyn: And so [00:14:00] I actually, that's actually kind of where I want to go next, which is your, your agent. So you're with Ann Tibbetts. I always like to have authors on here to kind of give their agent a shout out, talk a little bit about what their relationship's like, because I know that agents and authors have very different relationships.

And so I just like to ask like, what's, what's so great about working with Anne? 

Mandy McHugh: Anne has been so great. And I, I'm in a unique experience where I've had a few different agent relationships over the last five or six years. And It's really important to find what works for you, like there, there are so many different things that you might not anticipate that you need as a writer that might not jive with one agent's style and you might not feel comfortable asking questions and you need to have somebody who really meshes well with your style of writing and working.

Anne is, so she was actually one of my dream agents when I first started querying because she was very active on Twitter and she came back for that first novel and was like, She didn't owe me anything, she didn't know me, but [00:15:00] she gave me a full page critique on my manuscript and it wasn't like your writing is bad.

It was like, these are the things that you should be working on in order to strengthen yourself as a writer and to strengthen your book as a whole. So, and then she gave me like red flags to look out for in terms of publishing. And I really appreciated that. As somebody who did not have ties and didn't know anything about the industry, it was like a wake up call.

And it, like, helped me be smarter about my querying process. And then I signed with an agent who left publishing the day that I was supposed to go out and sub with my first book. foR various reasons. And then I signed with another agent Who was very, who seemed very passionate about Chloe Cates is Missing, which was before The Girl in the Treehouse.

But she decided to focus more on foreign rights, media rights, and YA, so we parted ways, and it just so happened that [00:16:00] Ann after I had my deal in place, by the way, for Chloe Cates, so I was on the table of the deal, and she left me mid deal. And it just so happened that I knew Anne from that first time.

And we had kind of kept up a conversation through Twitter. And she was with the house who had offered me a deal. So I reached out to her and I was like, can we have a discussion? And we have been like a great match ever since. So she is very knowledgeable and if she doesn't know something, she won't bullshit me.

She will just tell me up front and she will find out for me. She never gets frustrated with all of my questions. She has very clear communication standards. So like, you know what you're gonna get, you can ask for a meeting, you can set it up, you can reach out to her in several different ways. Like, she's very good about that stuff.

There's transparency, which is so important to me when there's so much about this industry that is not transparent or uniform at all. And she genuinely is [00:17:00] invested in my work, you know, it helps. I've had that, that first agent I was talking about, they tried to put me with another agent at the same agency who did not read thrillers and horrors.

And every comment that I got was like, it's too scary, it's too spook I'm like, but you don't read This is not gonna wor Like, you are a very nice person. It was not personal at all, but like It was not going to work. So yeah. 

David Gwyn: It's so funny. I've been doing this for a while. I've interviewed a lot of writers and the one thing that almost every story has in common is that none of them have anything in common.

Like the route to publishing seems like it is a windy path for everyone regardless. Yep. And I think that your story is really evident of that. of kind of just, you just keep plugging away and doing the work. 

Mandy McHugh: Yeah, you know, I tried to be very honest about it. It was not like a one and done type thing. It is not like [00:18:00] a dream meeting.

Like it's been a lot of highs and lows and you know, thinking, you know, questioning your own capability and like, am I going to have a future and Being on sub is a grueling process, you know, rejection is a huge part of this. So like, you hear no all the time and sometimes you get a reason for it and sometimes you don't.

In either way, it's just. You know, you gotta have somebody in your corner. 

FOr me, like, I love. Criticism, like constructive criticism. I thrive on it, and I'm not somebody that like needs to hold on to writing. So like for, It Takes Monsters, I think we cut like 50, 000 words at one point. Like, it was half the book. I still have the words somewhere, but like, I was like, you don't, you don't want that in there?

Fine. We will, we will cut it out. We will get rid of it. Whatever. Because I trust the people that I'm working with to want me to make the best product possible. And it doesn't always mean that, like, the vision that I have is going to be the [00:19:00] best because there are so many components that go into this, like, it needs to be marketable, it needs to get the sales, you need to have readers, so you have to find a middle ground between, like, your polished goal, your end vision dream, and, like, everything else that goes into it.

David Gwyn: I think it's so important for people to hear who want to be in traditional publishing and want to traditionally publish that it's, it's not just about, you want it to be just about what you want, then like you should go with the self publishing. There's nothing wrong with that. But you have to be ready to take that criticism.

Yes. Revise, given that, you know, that, you know, this product that you're making is not. Ultimately for you, it's for somebody to read. 

Mandy McHugh: And it's not always, you know, it is a team effort. You will have editors, you'll have copy editors, you will have a graphic designer doing your cover, and you might not get any creative, creative input on any of that.

And you can definitely not take the editor's advice sometimes, but not just across the board. You have to be [00:20:00] able to work, you know, for the common goal is that you're going to take your story and make it the best it can be. 

David Gwyn: Okay. Let's pause there for a second. So far in the podcast, we talked about why Mandy prefers to write morally great characters. 

Her writing style and where she is in her writing process. It's always so much fun to pick the brain of a writer you admire. And Mandy McHugh is really hitting her stride in the work she's doing. And the next part of the interview, we talk about her dialogue. I was so drawn to the banter between the sisters in this book. 

And Mandy's going to give us some tips on how we can write dialogue like her. So let's head back to the interview.

So, I do want to talk about one thing here, which is, you did so much well in this book.

I really enjoyed it. The one thing that stood out to me was the dialogue, specifically between Victoria and her sister Tegan. And I want to ask two questions about it. My first one is just how you developed their unique voices, because they sounded so different. 

Mandy McHugh: So that's funny because a lot of times, [00:21:00] like, I will let some of my friends read my drafts and they will be like, this is just five different brands of you.

Like, this is your sarcasm in five different ways. So I'm really used to just hearing like, it's just different variations of your voice. For this I really wanted to play on my sarc I am such a sarcastic, like, dark humor type person and I, I wanted to kind of offset the kind of goriness of it so it wasn't just straight blood and gore all the time.

So their conversations to me were a real opportunity to highlight the humor and I wanted them to have two distinct voices, two kind of different approaches to their jokes and their banter but like, They talk to each other the way I talk to my younger brothers. And we are like quick wit, snarky to each other, it's not like rainbows and butterflies and like always kind of just straight [00:22:00] out listening like we are wise asses and that is, I wanted to play with that so I really tried to put that dynamic in there.

David Gwyn: Yeah, that's great. And so the, the next thing, the second part of this question, which is then you have these two characters with unique dialogue with that, that are sarcastic and snarky and you put them in scenes together, obviously, and let them go at each other a little bit. And I'm curious how those scenes developed the, the dialogue between the two.

Is that something that you found? 

Mandy McHugh: So dialogue can be tricky because you, you don't want it to sound like a play and I took a couple of like screenwriting classes in grad school too. So like sometimes I will realize I have five pages of dialogue in a row and then I'm like, I need to, I need to tone it down.

So a lot of the fluidity of it comes in the editing process. And it's a lot of trial and error. Whereas like, I will read it through, I will love it, and then I will go back to it a week later and read what they said. And I'm like, [00:23:00] this isn't even literate. This doesn't make any sense at all. What was I thinking?

And I will change it. So I'm constantly, like, tweaking it to make it sound real as I'm reading it. And then I start reading it out loud. And if it hitches, or it doesn't come naturally, or if I'm stuttering over a phrase, I cut it. And I try to find a different approach Or a different tone and then I will try it again and start all over again 

David Gwyn: Yeah, I thought like I said, I thought it was so well done.

I think that's interesting that that's very which makes sense, you know, it happens and everything happens in revision. I do think again, if you're listening to this and you're looking for great examples of dialogue definitely pick up this book. Any, any other, any like last advice for, for aspiring writers who listen to this podcast and really want to improve their dialogue, anything that you think might help.

Mandy McHugh: Just trial and error. I will say when I started writing both of these characters I had like a. Like an upmarket vibe to it, so like, they sounded hoity toity [00:24:00] in my head. And I took a lot of that out to tone it down because they just ended up sounding pompous. So really just, you know your characters better than anybody else.

So really listen to the voices and what they're trying to come in and don't try to make them be anything that they're not. 

David Gwyn: Yeah, great advice. Great advice. So my last question is where can people find you? Where can people look you up? 

Mandy McHugh: Oh social media. I am everywhere basically right now I am on instagram at ac McHugh writer I'm on twitter at writer ac McHugh I'm also on threads and blue sky and I have a website mandymcuh.

com that has Everything outlined there. Great. 

David Gwyn: And yeah, if you're listening and you want to get in touch, I will link to all that stuff. So you have quick access to that to me and this was awesome. So much fun to talk to you. I really, really appreciate you taking the time to chat. Thank 

Mandy McHugh: you for having me.

This is great.

David Gwyn: Okay. So that's it. Hopefully you got as much out of this conversation as I did, as you can [00:25:00] tell from hearing Mandy talk about the stories she has coming up, as well as how she goes about writing. And the care she takes in developing her craft. That she's an author worthy of study. Hopefully you check out her book. It takes monsters. I thoroughly enjoyed it 

so definitely check that out. If you're looking to develop morally great characters and improve your dialogue next time on the podcast, we'll be talking to Erin Flanagan, Edgar award winner of deer season and author of the new novel. Come with me that I loved. 

Erin Flanagan: And so you have to balance like the surprise of what's coming that kind of tension with that kind of delicious feeling of I know what's I know what I don't know how it's going to come. But I know. that things are going to turn south at some point. 

David Gwyn: She, and I had a really fun conversation and I honestly think I laughed through most of it. 

So you'll definitely want to check that out. Subscribe so you don't miss it and I'll see you next week.